MHEG association secures new members

The International MHEG Promotion Alliance has secured seven new members including Top Up TV.

IMPALA aims to promote the use of the MHEG-5 standard in digital TV services around the world. MHEG-5 was made an ISO standard for multimedia presentations in the mid-1990s and is used in the UK to provide interactive TV services on digital terrestrial television.

In addition to Top Up TV, the association has added Hitachi, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, Finlux and New Zealand's Freeview to its member base. It was founded by S&T, Cabot Communications and EchoStar Europe.

"MHEG-5 is one of the core technologies embedded in all our TV sets sold in the European region, even though so far it has only been adopted in the UK," said Mark Londero, the general manager of technical planning at Sony TV Operations Europe. "Our motivation for supporting IMPALA is to see the expansion of broadcast support for MHEG-5 in Europe and beyond. There is the alternative MHP but that is much more processor and memory intensive and has yet to demonstrate any clear user benefit over MHEG."

"We are delighted that IMPALA has already gained such recognition within the marketplace," said David Cutts, managing director of S&T. "With companies of this calibre offering their support to MHEG-5 further uptake is guaranteed."